Teen Crews Brighten City’s Fire Hydrants

Azaria Green took a break Friday from maintaining and brightening New Haven’s fire hydrants, to watch Mayor Justin Elicker try his hand.

Every week for six weeks this summer, 15-year-old Azaria has been going out into the streets to maintain the city’s fire hydrants.

She starts by taking the caps off each hydrant. Next, she scrubs the nozzle for rust and lubricates it to ensure that firefighters will be able to remove the caps in an emergency. Finally, she paints the fire hydrant a bright, canary yellow.

Fire hydrant maintenance is only one part of Azaria’s role as one of nearly 50 teens in the city’s Youth Ambassador Program. During the rest of the week, she and her team are out picking up trash, learning life skills from their supervisors, and finding new ways to beautify the community.

The program is a collaboration among the police department, Livable City Initiative, and the parks and public works department. It aims to get young people involved in their communities and give them an opportunity to earn some extra pay.

“I’m looking forward to watching the mayor paint a fire hydrant,” Azaria said at a press event at the Dwight police substation on Friday. ​“We’ve been out here all day!”

The rest of Azaria’s crew, Fire Chief John Alston Jr., and Acting Police Chief Renee Dominguez. stood by to watch Mayor Justin Elicker learn to paint a fire hydrant.

“How’s my technique?” Elicker asked, while lubricating a nozzle under Azaria’s watchful eye.

Each crew consists of five youths, who started working on July 12. There are 12 teams working across the city; the teens are paid $13 dollars an hour. Typically, they work from 9 a.m. to 2:30 or 3 in the afternoon.

When the teens work on fire maintenance, it typically takes them about 20 minutes per hydrant with two people working on each one.

Alston gave the youth some tips to make the task easier.

“The trick is to not look at the cap when you’re putting it back on,” said Alston. ​“If you’re looking at the cap, things won’t line up the way they should.”

Fire property maintenance technician Michael Ingrassia helped train the youth ambassador crews. He said they were attentive and eager to learn. Many of them were able to grasp the importance of the task for public safety.

“If there’s any cracks in the fire hydrant from rust, they explode,” explained Ingrassia. ​“A lot of pressure comes through them all at once.”

Each youth team is supervised by a staff member from the city Youth and Recreation Department. Shadece McFadden, 32, said that in addition to teaching the youths how to do community service tasks, she teaches them skills like putting together a resume, dressing for a job interview, setting up a bank account, and cashing a paycheck.

“They’re teaching me stuff as much as I am teaching them,” said McFadden. ​“I had whole conversations with them about being comfortable in your own skin, combatting racism, and understanding what PTSD is — it’s about life lessons as well as learning these skills.”

Jovany Velez — another youth ambassador on the team — said that while he enjoys working on the fire hydrants, his favorite memory is actually from cleaning up.

“Yesterday there was a corner next to 200 Orange St. where we were cleaning that had a lot of trash,” said Jovany, 14. ​“When we were done, it was just so good to see it clean.”

Both Azaria and Velez said they might consider joining the fire department one day. Alston and Dominguez said that recruitment to the police and fire departments is a secondary goal of the program.

“Police officers are coming in and out of these substations all the time and interacting [with the youths],” said Dominguez. ​“We’re just grateful that we can utilize our substations in the summer programming.”